1. Be mindful of yourself
Try to recognize and acknowledge what you are feeling. Give yourself the time and space to process the emotions. Seek out some proven ways to cope with upsetting emotions.
Socialize - Don’t feel that you are alone or that you have to process this alone. Find friends who will listen without judgment. Try to be together - socializing in person is best if you can do it, otherwise FaceTime or call. Your last resort should be commiserating via text or DMs.
Use resources - Loyola has mental health resources. But you can also talk to your primary care physician and/or ask for a referral to a social worker or psychologist. Loyola's Muslim Chaplain and Student organization and Loyola's Hillel, Jewish student group.
Get outside - get out to the lake or parks or forest preserves. Being in nature has proven benefits for human physiology and psychology.
Exercise - Get some exercise and it will help you mentally and physically. It doesn’t have to be going to a gym, but it can be taking a brisk walk or biking or yoga.
2. Be mindful of categories v. stereotypes
Sociology teaches about ingroups and outgroups - people have a natural affinity and trust for the groups they identify with and a tendency to mistrust and homogenize groups that they do not belong to. Be mindful of this dynamic:
- Israeli policy does not reflect the feelings of all Jews and not even all Israelis
- Hamas’s terrorism does not represent all Muslims and not even all Palestinians
Without careful consideration, it is easy to stereotype entire categories - especially outgroups. The reality is that there are very nuanced opinions about both sides of the issues within each group:
- How U.S. Jews are experiencing the Israel-Hamas war
- Younger Americans stand out in their views of the Israel-Hamas war
- Not in Our Name; American Jewish Activists Lead March to White House over Isarael's 'Genocide'
- Not in Our Name; Jewish New Yorkers Speaking Out against 'Dehumanization' of Palestinians
- Letters to my Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi, 2019
- Many Palestinians in Gaza Hate Hamas, October 2023
- Before the War Gaza's Leaders Were Deeply Unpopular, October 2023
- Palestinian protests of Hamas, August 2023
- Palestinians protest against Hamas in online event, January 2022
- Palestinian Protests against Hamas in streets of Gaza, March 2019
3. Be mindful of others’ emotions
People process emotions differently. Some will be angry, others may have difficulty processing everything and may say or do something that seems insensitive or offensive. Take some breathes, give yourself space. If you or someone else is feeling a sense of anger, it is probably not a good time to be confrontational. Allow students the space to experience and express their emotions and this includes finding space for yourself too.
Check in on other students who are Muslim or Jewish. Let them know you care and are thinking about them. There is very real trauma and triggering images, videos and stories of both Palestinians and Israelis. Even more generally, for many Americans who are Muslim or Jewish, their religious in-group is a master status, which means that their religious identity shapes their experiences everywhere they go. And that experience is tainted by hatred and violence toward those master statuses. Islamophobia and Anti-semitism have both been highly visible and frequent since 2015. See these links:
- How it Feels to Be Muslim in America
- Islamaphobia is pervasive, systemic and a threat to us all
- How Does it Feel to be Jewish [in North America]
- How to criticize Israel without being antisemitic
- From CBS News, the ADL, The Hill and the Marshall Project, Both Anti-Semitic and Islamophobic Incidents are Rising
- American Hate book by Arjun Singh Sethi,
American Hate: Survivors Speak Out, Arjun Singh Sethi, a community activist and civil rights lawyer, chronicles the stories of individuals affected by hate. In a series of powerful, unfiltered testimonials, survivors tell their stories in their own words and describe how the bigoted rhetoric and policies of the Trump administration have intensified bullying, discrimination, and even violence toward them and their communities.
We hear from the family of Khalid Jabara, who was murdered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in August 2016 by a man who had previously harassed and threatened them because they were Arab American and from many more people impacted by the Trump administration, including Native, black, Arab, Latinx, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, undocumented, refugee, transgender, queer, and people with disabilities.
A necessary book for these times, American Hate explores this tragic moment in U.S. history by empowering survivors whose voices white supremacists and right-wing populist movements have tried to silence. It also provides ideas and practices for resistance that all of us can take to combat hate both now and in the future.
- From the ADL, in 2017 there was a surge of Anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S.
Our most recent report on anti-Semitic incidents in the United States showed a significant year-to-year increase: In 2017, anti-Semitic incidents surged nearly 60 percent, according to the 2017 ADL Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents. This was the largest single-year increase on record and the second highest number reported since ADL started tracking such data in 1979. The sharp rise was due in part to a significant increase in incidents in schools and on college campuses, which nearly doubled for a second year in a row.
- From PEW, in 2017 there was a surge of assaults against Muslims in the U.S.
- Charlottesville and the Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooting are still very recent.
4. Be mindful of what you "know"
Studies of social media show that increasingly, social media users inhabit a socially constructed media landscape. That is, instead of your news consumption being all of the news, it will be constructed in ways that may both - be shaped by your own biases, and then further reinforces/confirms those biases. One way that this occurs is that our social media feeds tend to reflect homophily or social connections of people that are like us - so we do not get to see the news that people are receiving on the other side of the issue. The second way that that this plays out in social media feeds is that algorithms tend to find feeds that keep users engaged in the social media platform. Often this results in feeds that find ways to outrage you and make you afraid or angry because these are primal emotions that are hard to resist. So social media algorithms send outrageous news to our feeds to engage us without filtering for truth or balance in reporting.
BBC journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh explains,
Shayan Sardarizadeh of the BBC explained to Hanaa’ Tameez of Neiman Journalism Lab that social media posters on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, or Twitter can make significant sums of money from “engagement farming.” Posting outrageous material that engages viewers pumps up a user’s brand, making them able to command high prices from marketers.
Sardarizadeh notes that the Israel-Hamas war is a particularly attractive situation for engagement farmers, and rumors and fake videos are flying.
And nefarious agents may be using social media to not only generate clicks but to foment divisiveness and anger. This 2017 article from The Texas Tribune documents how Russian agents used social media to organize a protest and a counter protest:
5. Be Mindful of What Others Know and Are Feeling
Sociologists study the way people interact based on shared meaning. The meanings that people share can have very real effects on their understanding of situations and their emotional reactions to it. However, sometimes different groups have very different shared meaning within their in-group and this leads to a difficulty and even anger toward out-groups. For example, in this situation there are shared meanings that some Jewish and Muslim Americans share within their in-groups that out-group members may not understand or interpret differently:
- What Israel means to Jewish people. After the Holocaust which killed 6 million Jewish people, many Jewish people felt that there was nowhere that they were safe. There were refugee boats turned away from countries all over the world and the generational trauma left the survivors feeling that they could not be safe anywhere - except for the newly created state of Israel. For many Jewish people, especially in America, criticism of Israel feels like criticism of the only safe haven that Jewish people can count on if their identity is under threat. And for Jews in Israel, they have always felt under threat since the 1950s so deterrence of such attacks is the only way to create a sense of safety. As Yossi Klein Halevi says, "to be defeated so totally by Hamas means that we don’t have deterrence anymore. And that, by the way, is what this war is about most of all for Israel. And we all know it here. This is the war to restore the credibility of Israeli deterrence."
- Palestinian freedom "from the River to the Sea." This slogan has been used in different forms over the last 50+ years so it has taken on different meanings in different contexts (NPR, Guardian, NYT, JVL). The full slogan is "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." For many Palestinians, this is a rallying cry for freedom from oppression and unequal treatment by the Israeli government which has had some measure of control over Palestinian life for decades. However, some Jews recall that this slogan was also co-opted by extremists and terrorists at various times throughout the last 50 years. When they hear the slogan, it harkens them back to the extremists who think there should be no Israel and the only freedom for Palestine will come when there is no country of Israel. Complicating matters is Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu who alluded to the phrase as a call for Israel to control all the land "from the river to the sea" and whose party has been saying the phrase as part of a platform denying the possibility of a Palestinian state since the 1970s.
- Zionism This term was created in Eastern Europe in the 1800s as the Jewish diaspora faced discrimination throughout Europe. The idea was that people who identify as Jewish need a nation to call home and feel safe in. It was a form of Jewish nationalism. After the state of Israel was established, Zionism took on new meaning related to exactly what land should be considered the Jewish nation. Should it include the Golan Heights? The Gaza Strip? The West Bank? Some people, including those identifying as Jewish, will define Zionism as allowing self determination which includes the areas that are majority Palestinian while others see Zionism as a specific reference to Jewish loyalty and the power of a Jewish state to take all of the land from the river of Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. This 2021 NPR report explained the complex understanding of the term long before the October 7, 2024 terrorist attacks. And this 2019 Jewish Telegraph article explains how the term gets interpreted differently.
These are examples of how people feel based on how they have been influenced to think about the world. The shared meaning of different people can create misunderstanding between different groups. Realizing that these types of misunderstandings can create visceral reactions can help us take a step back to be mindful of what others are thinking, feeling and experiencing and hopefully create greater understanding. Choose language carefully; be distinct. As Rabbi Heschel said, "Words create worlds."
Resources for Teachers
ADL - Mini Lessons about the Pyramid of Hate
https://www.adl.org/resources/tools-and-strategies/mini-lesson-teaching-pyramid-hate
ADL - Digital Kits for Educators:
https://www.adl.org/anti-bias-teaching-learning-digital-kits
(See screen shot below)
Vox - The Words Used to Describe the Conflict Shape How People Think About the War
International Sociological Association Statement
Loyola Center for Ignation Pedagogy - Antiracism resources
https://www.luc.edu/fcip/anti-racistpedagogy/anti-racistpedagogyresources/
Greater Good Science Center - How to talk to kids about the war in Gaza and Israel
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_talk_with_kids_about_the_war_in_gaza_and_israel
SPLC - Learning For Justice; Discussing War and Conflict Resources for Educators and Caregivers.
The Middle East Policy Council - TeachMidEast
https://teachmideast.org/for-educators/
Other Resources:
Combatants for Peace - consisting of former combatants in both communities*The film Disturbing the Peace was created on this movement and the Director make it available to watch for free."
Parents Circle/Families Forum - consisting of bereaved individuals in both communities
PEW Research 2017 assaults against Muslims are higher than 2001
Learn More About Muslims in this Email Class
NIH Islamophobia and Public Health in the U.S.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5055770/
Anti-Muslim sentiments are increasingly common globally and in the United States. The recent rise in Islamophobia calls for a public health perspective that considers the stigmatized identity of Muslim Americans and health implications of Islamophobic discrimination. Drawing on a stigma, discrimination, and health framework, I expand the dialogue on the rise of Islamophobia to a discussion of how Islamophobia affects the health of Muslim Americans. Islamophobia can negatively influence health by disrupting several systems—individual (stress reactivity and identity concealment), interpersonal (social relationships and socialization processes), and structural (institutional policies and media coverage). Islamophobia deserves attention as a source of negative health outcomes and health disparities. Future public health research should explore the multilevel and multidimensional pathways between Islamophobia and population health.
NYT article on teaching about the war
Teaching About the Israel-Hamas War (Gift Article)
NYT article on teaching about the war
VOX - All the deaths between Israel and Palestine since 2000
https://www.vox.com/2014/7/14/5898581/chart-israel-palestine-conflict-deaths
NPR - Palestinian Americans Feel Like No One Cares and Fear Islamophobia
The White House National Strategy to Stop Antisemitism
AJC guide to Implementing the National Strategy to Stop Antisemitism
